NEW YORK, May 19: The United States is stuck in a proverbial “quagmire” in Iraq as its plans for rebuilding and running the country have stalled and restoring peace in the country has become elusive, said the New York Times in its Monday edition.

In a detailed piece on the situation in Iraq, the newspaper noted “the looting, lawlessness and violence that planners thought would mar only the first few weeks has proved more widespread and enduring than President Bush and his aides expected and is threatening to undermine the American plan”.

Five weeks after Baghdad fell, Mr Bush finds himself exactly where he did not want to be: forced to impose control with a larger number of troops and to delay the start of efforts to turn power over to Iraqis, the daily noted.

The message that reached the White House from two recent meetings with potential Iraqi leaders, officials told the paper, was that it would be foolish to start experimenting with democracy without making people feel secure enough to go back to work or school, and without giving them back at least the basic services they received during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

The quick establishment of a civilian Iraqi interim authority, officials told the Times, would help demonstrate to a suspicious Arab world that America would not act as an occupier, as in Japan and Germany.

“We will in fact be greeted as liberators,” Vice President Dick Cheney said on March 16, three days before the war started. But that did not happen.

However, the New York Times observed, many of Baghdad’s 10,000 police officials are just now trickling back. The Iraqi soldiers disappeared. No one in Washington anticipated the degree to which the chaos would undermine that central goal of presenting the United States as a liberator, senior administration officials told the paper.